Despite off-field distractions to deal with as a result of Mark Aston’s suspension, and injuries hampering their current Championship campaign, Sheffield Eagles are remaining positive about the club’s future prospects.
IT IS not overstating the facts to say that without Mark Aston, there would be no Sheffield Eagles.
Having already etched his name in club history with his Lance Todd Trophy-winning heroics in the historic 1998 Challenge Cup triumph, Aston then played a significant role in getting the Eagles back up and running as a separate entity two years later following the original club’s disastrous single-season merger with Huddersfield Giants.
The former half-back has worn many hats at Sheffield since then – head coach for over 500 games, director of rugby, chief executive, amongst others – yet currently finds himself in a commercial role while serving an 18-month suspension from any involvement with the playing side for breaching the RFL’s Operational Rules around head contact and return to play protocols.
Aston’s hopes of overturning the ban, originally handed down in October last year, were ultimately conceded when he withdrew his appeal on 19th May, the day before it was scheduled to be heard, bringing to a close uncertainty which had cast a shadow over the man affectionately known as “Tubbs” since he was initially suspended on a ‘no fault’ basis by the club in July last year.
“It’s been really tough,” Eagles captain Joel Farrell told Rugby League World. “Tubbs has been a big part of a lot of our playing careers.
“With not knowing exactly what’s going to happen with the appeals and things, there has been a lot going on.
“It’s not something you go out onto the field thinking about consciously, but in the back of people’s minds it’s still there.
“At the end of the day, we’re rugby players and we’re paid to go out there and win games, so that’s what the boys have been trying to do.”
At 31, second row Farrell is barely old enough to remember the halcyon days at Sheffield in the mid-1990s when his father Anthony was a formidable presence in the Eagles pack and the club was a founder member of Super League.
One person who does, however, is head coach Craig Lingard, who began his professional career playing for the Eagles’ academy and reserve-grade Alliance teams in that era before going on to become an icon at Batley Bulldogs where he remains the club’s all-time leading scorer.
The 47-year-old succeeded Aston, who originally planned to step up to director of rugby, in early December, returning to the Betfred Championship after getting his first taste of being a full-time head coach during a season in charge of Betfred Super League outfit Castleford Tigers.
Despite the off-field turmoil, it was an opportunity Lingard readily seized and he is convinced of the potential of the club, particularly with the plans in place to leave the Olympic Legacy Park on the site of their old Don Valley Stadium home for a new facility to be shared with non-League football team Sheffield FC on the site of the old Sheffield Transport Sports Club at Meadowhead.
“One of the things I said at the time after leaving Castleford was when you’ve coached at Super League level, you probably want to get rid of half the clubs you want to work with at that moment in time in you’re career because you’re still ambitious,” Lingard told Rugby League World.
“What I didn’t want to do was just go to a club which was happy to float along and survive, and just go game to game and season to season. I wanted to go to a club which had got some ambition behind them of either getting in to Super League or already being there.
“I think Sheffield are a club which ticks the boxes of what Super League wants with locality as a big-city team and the potential to generate some big sponsorship and interest with where they are, and the plans to relocate to their own ground in a few years.
“If Sheffield could get their own ground and start putting down some roots and foundations, I think that’s ultimately what the club needs to survive and grow long-term.”
Nevertheless, Lingard has faced a tough start to life in charge of the Eagles, who are battling to avoid being part of the Super Eights promotion and relegation shake-up involving the bottom four Championship and top four Betfred League One clubs after missing out on the play-offs on points difference last year.
While the situation with Aston cast a pall over Sheffield, a raft of injuries in key positions has decimated the playing side to the extent that Lingard estimates around 66 percent of their games have featured a different full-back, stand-off and scrum-half combination.
“It’s a situation which I don’t think any other club has been in before,” Lingard said.
“When a coach comes into a new club it’s normally because the previous coach has been sacked or he’s retiring or he’s moving to a new club, then the new coach comes in and everyone cracks on as normal.
“I guess that uncertainty, whether we like it or not, has been there in the background and has had an impact on certain things.
“With everything else which has been going on and the lack of half-backs we’ve had, it’s made it very, very difficult for us to get any sort of consistency together.”
Farrell, who was appointed skipper by Lingard ahead of the 2025 campaign, is one of those who has been sidelined too after suffering a grade-three calf tear in March which put him out of action for 13 weeks.
The Jamaica international, now in his seventh season with the Eagles, still made it his mission to support his teammates in any way he could during that recovery period, from helping them with their pre-match preparation to acting as waterboy during games when he was able to start running again.
Farrell has experienced the highs as well as the lows at Sheffield though, being part of the team which won the AB Sundecks 1895 Cup at Wembley in 2019 and returned last year for the defeat to Wakefield Trinity, and could think of no place he would rather be even now.
“It’s been hard to watch the boys with results not going our way, but at least now I get to get back out there with them and try to help get them some results,” Farrell said.
“Sheffield is like the place I call home. I loved playing at other clubs before, but Sheffield has always felt different to me.
“It’s the set-up, how things are done, the people who are there, it feels like home to me.
“I’ve never really looked to go anywhere else the whole time I’ve been there, I’ve never really spoken to another club, it’s just felt like the place for me.”
Lingard has faced plenty of challenges during his coaching career, not least of all trying to hold things together at Keighley while he and the players were going six months without being paid due to financial issues at the time.
Those experiences have been able to help him navigate the issues at Sheffield and while he admits he would happily fast-forward to the start of the 2026 season, his enthusiasm for the job remains as high as it did when he first took it.
“Even more so because the adversities we’re going through as a club, you know you’re going to come through the other side and when you do, you can see brighter days coming,” Lingard said.
“It makes all the hard work and pain and suffering you’re going through worthwhile. I’m really, really positive about what the future holds and where we’re going to go.”
While Championship survival is the immediate aim, Farrell is taking inspiration from the improbable run London Broncos went on in the second half of the 2023 Championship season to earn promotion, which included knocking out the Eagles in the first round of the play-offs.
While there is now no automatic promotion and relegation between Super League and the second tier now, he is in no doubt brighter days lie ahead for Sheffield as well.
“Look at Hull KR now, a few years ago people wouldn’t think they’d be killing it every week and winning stuff,” Farrell said.
“Especially with the changes we’ve had, change takes time to adapt to and work itself out, but in the end, it always comes better with Sheffield.”
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 511 (August 2025)